The House in Amalfi (22 page)

I heard the rooster crowing—too loudly as always. Of course, dinnertime. The chickens were crouched on the ground, feathers fluffed, looking huffily back at me and Mr. Rooster flew threateningly at the wire fence. I took a quick step back. Did I really need a rooster? I still hadn’t figured out if you got eggs without one, which just goes to prove how ignorant I am about the sex lives of poultry.

I opened the gate and flung in the feed. They leaped on it
like starving prisoners, making me feel guilty. I realized, not for the first time, that I knew nothing about chickens. And nothing about cows either, come to that. Yet weren’t cows supposed to be placid, peaceful creatures? Maybe I should have started with Daisy instead of these wild birds!

With the chickens at least temporarily quiet, I went back to my painting, determined to at least finish
something
I’d started. It was after one o’clock in the morning when, with my arms one big ache, I finally did.

The room smelled of paint, so I showered, then went downstairs.

The old sofa fit my weary body as though it remembered me, and I dropped off the edge of the world for a few hours, not even thinking about Lorenzo Pirata. But he was with me when I woke up, right there at the forefront of my mind.

I wondered what Jon-Boy would have advised me to do. I hated to peek into his diary again, but I needed to know if he’d written anything about buying the house and where the deed of sale might be.

I threw on a robe, went to his room and took a seat at his beautiful desk. It was carved with pretty scrolls and shells and so perfect for a seaside villa. I imagined him finding it in some dingy antiques-shop window in Naples. Perhaps in one of those cobbled alleys where insolent mustached men lingered menacingly in the shadows ready to take on the unwary tourist who’d strayed off the prescribed route. Of course, Jon-Boy wouldn’t have given a damn about them. We had wandered those backstreets together on many an evening, me with a gelato clutched in my hand and a great deal of it on my face and Jon-Boy with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, peering into dusty doorways. I remembered the dim chandelier that had charmed him with its painted iron rosebuds and wreaths of laurel.

“It’s perfect for your room,
tesoro
,” he’d said to me, and I’d wrinkled my nose and said he was crazy; all I wanted was a green-shaded lamp, like the one he had on his table.

“Okay,” he’d agreed, “but here’s the deal. I get you a table and the lamp and you do some work for a change. After all, I can’t have you going back to the Mortimers ignorant, can I?” My heart had skipped a beat at the mention of going back, but then he’d given me that sideways look and a grin so I knew he was only teasing. Nevertheless, I promised and he got me a table and the lamp. For a couple of weeks I sat there supposedly studying history and Italian verbs but mostly just staring out the window, dreaming dreams and longing to be free so I could go for a swim. Jon-Boy was working hard on his novel at his table downstairs, because then he still worked and he didn’t yet have this fancy desk.

I opened the top drawer and took out his diary. Then I sat trying to get up the courage to read it, afraid of what it might reveal.

Stalling, sifting through the drawers, finding some rough notes for the never-written novel. Then, to my surprise, I found a whole chapter. It was about a child and her wonderment at everything she encountered on coming to live in a strange country. The child was obviously me and the father Jon-Boy.

In it, he described himself as kindly but irresponsible man, a nomad, wandering from place to place, always searching for something new to inspire him: a new city, a new wine, a new woman. The only constant in his life was the child without whom, he said at the end of the chapter, he was nothing.

I am a man without an identity. A failure
, he wrote.
Children own us, and no matter how much we squirm and struggle, they will never let us go. That is true love.

I put down the chapter. The man I had thought so strong,
so invincible, a man who owned his actions and his world, had confessed that at heart he considered himself nothing, except in the eyes of his child.

I sat for a long time thinking about him. I wished he were here so I could tell him he was not a failure—not in his work, nor in his life, nor in his love. I wanted to tell him he was the best father any girl ever had and I would not have changed my time in Italy with him for anything, that it was the event that had changed my life.

I put the chapter back in the drawer. I had no stomach to read the sad confessions in his diary, and instead I drove to Pirata, bought a scythe at Umberto’s, then came back and attacked my garden.

I worked like a maniac for the next few days as though to prove to myself—as well as to Lorenzo Pirata—that this was
my
house and, as I’d promised, I was here to stay.

I cleared brush; I dug the earth and fertilized it; I dragged out weeds with my bare hands and got stung and prickled with thorns. I stood knee-deep in the cold rushing waterfall and cleaned watery weeds from under its banks. I stripped the belvedere of its layers of beautiful blue morning glory; then I hosed it down and got on my knees and up a ladder to scrub off decades of encrusted dirt.

I hadn’t remembered how lovely the belvedere was, with its perfect proportions, its lovely columns and blue mosaic dome. I rushed immediately into town to buy a pair of delicate iron chairs and a little table for drinks. I put them in there and celebrated my handiwork alone that evening, with a bottle of Prosecco and a sunset to dream about.

Next, I tackled the great swathe of pink oleander and purple bougainvillea that had encroached several feet onto the terrace, hacking at it with my scythe, getting more blisters and sticking on more Band-Aids. And then I found a great surprise.

Hidden beneath all the heavy blossoms edging the terrace was a long tiled bench. The tiles were from Vietri, just along the coast. They were handmade, with pictures of branches of lemons against a cobalt background and of olive trees and sunbursts and blue waves foaming in silvery white. There was even a picture of the Castello up on its hill, its pirate flag flying as it always did when the family was in residence. And there was a picture of my charming little house, with its dome and arches, framed with cedar trees and pink blossoms. Everything was there, even the waterfall and the meditation stone.

It was breathtaking, a work of art, baroque and ornate with its elaborate curves and scrolls and its charming pictures. I recalled seeing a similar bench on a visit to the Hotel San Pietro in Positano with Jon-Boy. I also knew it must have cost a great deal of money and I guessed he bought it when the royalties from the novel were still flowing in. I was grateful that he had. Not only was it beautiful, but it confirmed my belief that the house belonged to him. Not even Jon-Boy would have commissioned something this expensive for a house he did not own.

I trimmed back the flowering bushes carefully so they would frame the bench without obscuring the view. Then I measured it for the cushions. I would have them made locally in sun yellow sailcloth piped in cobalt.

I sat on my bench with a feeling of accomplishment. I was claiming the house as mine. I had taken the first steps to restoring my garden. I had painted my bedroom and ordered a new bed. The refrigerator was also ordered, and the man from the propane storage place was coming to inspect my stove. I’d found an old-fashioned chimney sweep in Pirata and he’d promised to clean my chimney so I’d be able to have log fires in winter. I already anticipated the pleasure of listening to
the crackling logs and watching the flames dancing and hearing the swoosh of the winter sea roaring against the cliffs.

But what I’d really achieved was that for an entire week I had put Lorenzo and his plot against me out of my mind. I’d gotten on with my life, on my own. It was the way I intended things to be.

And then Nico showed up again.

“How are you,
Cara
?” Nico came bounding down the steps to where I was sitting on my beautiful Vietritiled bench, taking a moment’s break from my labors.

He couldn’t have chosen a more inopportune time. I was hot, tired, and sweaty. There was dirt under my fingernails and Band-Aids over my blisters and my hair was dragged back in a limp ponytail. I looked about a hundred, or at least my age.

“I’m not sure how I am,” I said shortly. “I’m too tired even to think about it.”

“Poor girl.” He dropped onto the bench next to me, but I kept my face firmly forward. I could feel him studying my profile and, self-conscious, I pushed back the escaping strands of damp hair. He snatched my hand in his, pressing it flat, examining it.

“But what’s all this?” he cried, aghast. “What happened to you?”

I shrugged. “Nothing much, just hard work.”

“But there is no need. Mifune has a crew of men working on our gardens. He would have sent someone over to do the hard labor.
Cara
, you were not meant for cutting down trees; there are other more suitable occupations for a woman as lovely as you.”

I threw him a glance from the corner of my eye. He was so extravagantly ridiculous I wanted to laugh.

“Please let me arrange it for you,” he said, but I shook my head and told him I wanted to do it alone.

“This is my house, despite what your father thinks, and I’ll look after it,” I said firmly.

Ignoring what I’d said about his father, he said cajolingly, “Then at least have dinner with me tonight. We can talk about your bracelet.”

I relented a little—after all, he’d made such a charming, generous gesture, though I did wonder at the back of my mind what he expected to get in return. Telling myself I was being too cynical, I remembered my manners and thanked him. “But you really shouldn’t have,” I added, “and that’s why I sent you the check.”

“And here it is—back again.” He put the check on the bench between us. “Please, it was a gift. Allow me that pleasure.”

I met his pleading eyes. How could I resist? And damn it, why should I? Just because I was at war with the father didn’t mean I shouldn’t have fun with the son.

“Okay. I’ll have dinner with you. On one condition: I pay.”

This made him laugh uproariously. “Oh, American women and their independence!” he exclaimed. “
Cara
, no Italian woman would ever have dreamed of saying that.”

“Take it or leave it,” I said.

He nodded. “Very well. I’ll take it.”

I left him wandering through the garden, inspecting my week’s work, while I showered and washed my hair and put on something reasonably pretty. I left my hair to dry in the wind, and this time we took Nico’s lipstick-red convertible and with the top down drove at nerve-racking speed up onto the mountain road to Ravello.

We ended up at the gloriously glitzy Hotel Palazzo Sasso. Nico headed straight for the bar, where he was obviously well-known. It seemed to be a rendezvous spot for the glitterati,
and admiring the chic, bejeweled women I wished halfheartedly I’d made more effort to dress.

Nico greeted people as old friends, introducing me this time and behaving quite properly, I thought. Then he escorted me to a secluded table and ordered a bottle of champagne.

“Does your family always drink champagne?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I had lunch with your father the other day. He served champagne, too.”

Nico’s brows rose and for a moment he looked disconcerted. “I hope you enjoyed your lunch,” he said, but I could tell he was restraining himself from asking exactly why I’d had lunch with his father. I told him anyway.

He refilled our glasses. “That’s none of my business,” he said quite curtly. “I know nothing about it.” He looked at me and then added, “All I know is that I want you to stay.”

My spirits rose with the champagne bubbles. “Don’t worry,
caro
—I’m not going anywhere,” I said, making him laugh.

“Do you like this hotel?” He gestured to the elaborate marble halls, the gorgeous bouquets, the smart waiters in white jackets, the glass elevators, and the waterfall.

I shrugged, “It’s okay, I suppose,” I said, and then we were laughing again.

Taking my hand, he whispered in my ear, “It could be yours, Lamour. We could take a suite; we could stay here together, you and I. I’ll smother you in the luxury you deserve; I’ll shower you with rose petals and the kisses you need; I’ll make perfect love to you. . . .”

He was so outrageous I laughed. I said, “Thank you, but perhaps not tonight, maybe some other time.”

“Okay,” he said briskly, as though he’d expected to be rejected and it was all part of the game. “Then you will take me out for dinner.” And he swept me back into his car and
down the hill to a simple cantina that had been around for more than three hundred years, called Cumpá Casimo.

The owner knew Nico—didn’t everyone?—and though the place was packed found a table for us. We sat beneath lofty arches and were served veal with lemon and hearty homemade pasta. It was exactly the kind of meal that made me know why I so loved living in Italy.